The
end of «commercial production» of the MOX plant at Cadarache,
ATPu

Too risky for European fuel, but just right for US
weapons plutonium?

Cadarache’s ATPu plant has ceased commercial
activity, but plans to fabricate test MOX assemblies for the United
States. The announcement, of the «official» end to the commercial
operation of the ATPu plant at Cadarache on July 31, 2003 marks the
end of the operator’s blackmail attempts to make its interests
prevail over safety concerns. But the possible use of this plant –
without any discussion – for fabrication involving American military
plutonium raises new concerns.

There is no summer break for the plutonium industry.
Confronted with an ineluctable decline, of which the British press gives
an almost daily illustration (1), of its classical
commercial services – reprocessing and the fabrication of mixed
oxide fuel (MOX) for light water reactors –, the industry is looking
for every new path it can develop. For instance, India (2)
and Russia announced almost simultaneously, in July 2003, that they
had carried out new irradiation of MOX fuel in fast breeder reactors.

The announcement by Russia that it completed the
first irradiation in one of its BN-600 fast breeders (Beloyarsk-3) of
a 10 kilogram sample of MOX fuel made with weapon plutonium (3)
is an important step in the framework of the joint agreement between
Russia and the United States, concluded in 2000, to dispose of 34 metric
tons each of «surplus» plutonium from their nuclear arsenal.
It confirms that Russians prefer to use this plutonium in fast breeder
reactors – though the most proliferating option – rather
than in light water reactors, which they regard as inefficient for this
program.

Meanwhile, the United States is trying to accelerate
the implementation of its own disposition program. After the decision,
in April 2002, to abandon the initial «dual track» strategy
– immobilization of a portion of the plutonium in a waste form,
and fabrication of the remainder into MOX fuel for light water reactors
–, the program has become a «single track» strategy
based on the MOX option alone.

To gain time, the United States has developed a
«Eurofab» option which involves the fabrication in Europe
of the Lead Test Assemblies (LTAs) of MOX fuel necessary for the qualification
of the process. This is only possible in two plants, P0 in Dessel, Belgium
and ATPu in Cadarache, France. Since July 2002, when the Belgian government
indefinitely delayed its decision on the issue, the ATPu plant in Cadarache
has been considered the «best» option. The announcement
during the first half of 2003 of the «official» end, as
of July 31, 2003, of the commercial activity of ATPu does not seem to
have influenced the initial strategy.

The announcement marks the end of an eight-year
struggle between the French safety authority and the industrial operator
of ATPu, COGEMA, attempting by blackmail – revealed in a WISE-Paris
Briefing in July 2000 (4) – to make
its own interests prevail over safety concerns. The plant is situated
close to one of the most active seismic zones in France, and should
be shut down because of its poor seismic design, but COGEMA wanted first
to secure guarantees that it would be authorized to increase the capacity
of its other plant, in Marcoule.

As an end to a long period of bargaining, which
eventually saw the present Government adopt COGEMA’s view by paving
the way to the increase at Melox in order to «transfer»
there ATPu’s capacity, «commercial operation» of the
plant stopped 16 July 2003, according to COGEMA. The production of the
plant may actually not stop, nor the controversy, if it is used to produce
the MOX LTAs for the United States, although its obsolescence makes
it not safe enough to produce European fuel.

The operation, which would be unprecedented, is
not subject to any discussion. There are however important risks. According
to COGEMA, the project «would not raise safety concerns, because
there would only be a very small quantity of plutonium there, less than
one tenth of what was there when the plant was operating at its maximal
capacity» (5). That is to say,
the potential threat posed by the installation – the possible
dispersion of its plutonium inventory in case of a major earthquake
– that leads the safety authority to request the plant closure
would remain, although lowered. Moreover, this declaration makes no
mention of the characteristics of the specific plutonium involved, which
would increase, in particular, criticality problems – enough for
the LTAs’ fabrication not to be authorized in the modern Melox
plant, submitted to more stringent safety rules.

WISE-Paris provides today, in a new Briefing, a
detailed overview of the case. It assesses the nature and background
of the Cadarache option. The document also analyzes, from a political,
regulatory and technical point of view, the reasons why the LTA project
targeted P0 in Dessel and ATPu in Cadarache. It discusses the range
of problems raised by the project to produce LTAs at ATPu and highlights
the controversy that this proposal has stimulated.

The international plutonium industry
is in decline. The traditional foreign clients of the two main providers
of reprocessing services in France and the UK are not renewing decade
old contracts. The fast breeder reactor technology, that was supposed
to make use of the plutonium, has been abandoned by all of the Western
nuclear countries. As a consequence, and because separation of plutonium
has been ongoing in spite of the failure of the fast breeder reactors,
there are vast stocks of separated plutonium. The use of plutonium in
the form of mixed oxide uranium-plutonium or MOX fuel has been promoted,
mainly by the plutonium industry itself. However, a series of quality-control
scandals, especially in the UK and Japan, as well as the high costs
compared to the uranium fuel option, have thrown the plutonium strategy
into disarray.

On the other hand, the U.S. Government has decided
to dispose of 34 MT of weapons grade plutonium in the form of MOX fuel,
though the program still faces regulatory, technical and financial hurdles.
Due to U.S. inexperience, the European plutonium industry has been called
on to help with the development of an entire plutonium fuel system in
the U.S.. In order to accelerate the process, impacted by frequent and
significant delays, the U.S. Government has decided to ask the French
and Belgian Governments for the possibility to get MOX lead test assemblies
(LTAs) fabricated in COGEMA’s ATPu facility in Cadarache, France
or in the P0 facility in Dessel, Belgium – the so-called Eurofab
option.

While the U.S. Department of Energy and COGEMA
and Belgonucléaire continue to communicate about the Eurofab
option, the public has been left out of this discussion. Given that
the public will be placed at risk during transport and fabrication operations,
particularly at the seismically-unsafe Cadarache plant, the plans being
discussed behind closed doors should urgently be publicly presented
and analyzed. Further, the flimsy regulatory framework of the 40 year
old Cadarache and Dessel facilities does not guarantee an appropriate
licensing procedure.

DOE’s presentation to the French and Belgian
Governments that it would undertake preparation of an Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) on the LTA program should be honored and plans
for the sea shipment of weapons plutonium from the U.S. to Europe should
be revealed and publicly discussed.

In hand with this, the DOE should take immediate
steps to insure that the public has a role in the overall decision-making
process associated with this program, along with fully revealing its
overall costs.

That the French Government would permit the
U.S. Government to enter into a MOX fabrication contract even after
commercial operation has ceased at Cadarache at the end of July 2003
is a highly-charged political issue which could have serious environmental
and public health consequences.

Thus, the following question is urgently awaiting
an answer: If Cadarache is too unsafe for fabrication of French or German
MOX made from reactor-grade plutonium then why is it safe enough for
fabrication of weapons-grade MOX for the United States?

Notes:

It looks as though BNFL had to “subcontract”
parts of its MOX fuel contracts with German or Swiss customers because
of its difficulties with the SMP operation.
See “BNFL subcontracted an order for MOX fuel, given delays
at SMP”, Nuclear Fuel, Number 15, 21 July2003